Archive for the 'Egypt' Tag Under 'Letters To The Editor' Category

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Maneck Bhujwala: Thanks for the Register editorial, “Spending is the real fiscal cliff” [Opinion, Dec. 9], and its suggestions. The “bipartisan fiscal orgy” of the last decade mentioned, can be put in reverse gear this year by accepting the balanced plan put out by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.

Runaway spending by legislators is, indeed, the main culprit, although the reasons that have led to it are many. Besides the drain of hundreds of billions of dollars from unneeded wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and the continuing war in Afghanistan that started out as a legitimate response to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, our nation has not accepted the notion that we are no longer as prosperous as we were after World War II and continue to dole out generous benefits without reviewing and pruning them for today's fiscal condition.

Without removing the minimum safety net for our taxpaying citizens, we can cut benefits or eliminate many social programs that are no longer needed or affordable, especially those directed toward people who have never contributed their share of taxes. We should also review and cut subsidies to the profitable oil, agriculture and other industrial giants, as well as the ones in the form of special insurance and Social Security programs enjoyed by our legislators.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke speaks at the Economic Club of New York on November 20, 2012 in New York City. In his address he urged Congress to act to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff" of severe budget cuts and tax hikes in 2013, which he said would throw the U.S. economy back into recession. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

TRABUCO CANYON, M. J. Knudsen: By now, everyone knows the politicians will kick the fiscal-cliff can down the road. That's too bad, because, despite all the media's fear mongering, there is no fiscal cliff, for two reasons.

First, the spending reduction amounts to $110 billion, just 7 tenths of 1 percent of gross domestic product. We won't notice the reduction. If the forecast is 2 percent growth, this reduction would make it 1.3 percent. If recession is defined as negative GDP growth, this isn't it.

Second, the argument that $500 billion in higher taxes will cause recession because people will have less to spend assumes that is what they'd do with it. When they got the tax reduction initially, the assumption was that they'd spend the extra money, but they didn't. People are already spending and running up credit card debt. The tax increases are so small and diverse that they're highly unlikely to have any impact on the average American. They won't stop spending what they never spent in the first place.

The real benefit here is the nearly halving of the deficit in a single year. No other country in the world has shown the willingness or ability to do that. The impact that will have on the strength of the U.S. dollar, our credit rating and our financial stability will be extraordinary, and set the course for not only a balanced budget in the near term, but also the possibility of chipping away at the corrosive debt load we've taken on. The only thing we have to fear is fear.

President Mohammed el-Megarif, front row second left, lays a wreath, during his visits to the U.S. Consulate to express sympathy for the death of the American ambassador, Chris Stevens and his colleagues in the deadly attack on the Consulate last Tuesday September 11, in Benghazi, Libya, Friday, Sept. 14, 2012. The American ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed when a mob of protesters and gunmen overwhelmed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, setting fire to it. Ambassador Chris Stevens, 52, died as he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff as a crowd of hundreds attacked the consulate Tuesday evening, many of them firing machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon)

IRVINE, Anila Ali: O.C. Muslims are shocked and horrified at the heinous crimes that the murderers in Libya committed [“O.C. Muslims condemn violence, film,” News, Sept. 13]. The reason why the Prophet of Islam was sent to Earth is being eroded by the actions of these barbaric miscreants.

The irony is that, had the Prophet been alive today, he would have forgiven the misguided producer and vehemently condemned any violent reaction for he believed God was the protector, and like the great prophets taught, man must forgive and let God be the judge.

The Muslim community of Southern California has grown very close to the interfaith community, especially the Jewish community. In the past couple of years, the O.C. interfaith community has worked very closely with us. For example, interfaith iftars at all mosques, initiatives like The Olive Tree Initiative of the UC Irvine, O.C. Peace, O.C. and L.A. Human Rights Commissions have brought people of all faiths closer.

The movie must be seen as an effort to hamper these truly noble efforts. The Muslim community expresses its outrage and condemnation at the murders and promises to continue its nation building and interfaith efforts.

Protesters destroy an American flag pulled down from the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012. Egyptian protesters, largely ultra conservative Islamists, have climbed the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo, went into the courtyard and brought down the flag, replacing it with a black flag with Islamic inscription, in protest of a film deemed offensive of Islam. (AP Photo/Mohammed Abu Zaid)[/caption]

FULLERTON, D.Q. Rosenow: Had any one of the assaults upon American ground and embassy property taken place on “W's” watch, we would be deluged with media reprovals of his instigations of Islamic hatred and fury. But wait! We are nearly four years into the reign of President Barack Obama, the Great Ameliorator, who pledged to personally sit down with Mideast mullahs and muckety-mucks to assure them of our “reset,” our hope, our love, our abject remorse, our pacific passivity.

Where are all those dreamers who assured us that “W's” departure and Obama's succession meant “Peace in our time?

Did any of those promised beerless summits occur? Why do they still hate us? How could we be caught with our guard down, thrice, and in these troubled times? Where does the buck now stop?

Egyptian protesters burn a U.S. flag and chant anti U.S. slogans during a demonstration in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012, as part of widespread anger across the Muslim world about a film ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad.(AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

SANTA ANA, Michael R. Sumners: How ironic that Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and his party were attacked and killed by “Muslim extremists” on the anniversary of Sept. 11. Or, perhaps, I should say, how moronic.

For this was yet another attack not just on a few people, but on the very core of who we, Americans, are as a people with our crazy ideas about freedom of religion and speech and the separation of church and state.

Now, perhaps, people can see why Israel, surrounded by such “neighbors,” has such a great concern when one of them, Iran, that continually cries out for the destruction of Israel and the Great Satan (America), wants to go nuclear. And why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a little peevish over our current administration's vacillation on the matter.

And we should not be all that thrilled with the current “freedom fighters” in Syria. For that religion is their politics, too.

WESTMINSTER, Marvin Tuomala: Occupy people and the extreme Left blame bankers and Wall Street for the financial meltdown. If you do root cause analysis, you find that blaming bankers and Wall Street is blaming symptoms. A thorough root cause analysis leads one to the real cause. The root cause is government policies on housing, and the Community Reinvestment Act passed by Congress, which was championed by presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and enforced by New York governor Andrew Cuomo and the Department of Housing & Urban Development.

The extreme Left, like Barney Frank, blamed banks and President George W. Bush to deflect blame. President Barack Obama has aided and abetted this lie with his class warfare. The mainstream media refuses to tell the truth about the root cause. They aid and abet the perpetrators of the disaster. The nation will not heal until we are willing to be honest about the root causes of the problems we face. Failure to do will result in the economic and moral failure of the country. America has a choice to make. Do we remain a democratic republic or do we slide into socialism where everyone loses. [More letters on the occupy movement]

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TRABUCO CANYON, Mike Rodgick: The Occupy group has it all wrong. The rich are not evil. Economic activity that enabled some to become rich provided the jobs that funded the hopes and dreams of the middle class. The rich got rich by providing goods and services others were willing to pay for. We do not owe the rich anything but gratitude.

MISSION VIEJO, Burl Estes: The Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in 1928, arose from an extreme version of Islam that emerged out of the post-colonial rise of Arab nationalism. While many Muslims just want to get on with life and have no leanings toward religious extremism, let alone violence, far too many others have fed upon a sense of cultural dislocation and bought into the teachings of the extremists.

The Brotherhood's beliefs were strongly influenced by Islamic thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb and later fused with the puritanical Wahhabi doctrine that is the orthodoxy in Saudia Arabia which the Saudis have been promoting worldwide by building mosques and madras religious schools that teach the Koran as being the literal word of God, which includes the parts about either subjugating or killing infidels.

Qutb wrote that Muslims must answer to God alone and that human government was illegitimate. Government was, therefore, a proper target for jihad which would be waged by true believers seeking to destroy the kingdom of man to establish the kingdom of heaven on Earth. The defining characteristic of the doctrine is that the world must be conquered for Islam.

Both extremists and moderate Muslims recoil from the breakdown of Western values, which they see as widespread decadence in the forms of alcoholism, drug use, pornography, promiscuity and the breakdown of family life. Sayyed Qutb wrote after a visit to the United States in 1948, “Humanity is living in a large brothel.” And the Kardashian sisters, Paris Hilton and Lady Gaga weren't even around then.

-ANAHEIM, Albert V. Ogrodski Sr.: The Egyptian revolution was presented as the most peaceful ever. I was amazed at how peaceful it came off. However, in case you missed it, the Register published the protests' death toll [“State workers demand better pay in Egypt,” Feb. 15]:

The interior ministry says 33 policemen were killed and 1,109 wounded in 18 days of clashes. Several hundred protesters are thought to have been killed, but no exact figures are available.

This, to our biased media, is peaceful. And they have no interest in knowing how many protesters died or how they died. I saw none of this on television.

CHINO HILLS, Andrew Clark: Celebratory pandemonium erupts through the streets of Egypt as they bask in the glory of Hosni Mubarak's resignation. As the news spreads throughout America, we react in a similar way. Why?

Mubarak was a long time ally and friend of the United States. He sent troops to Saudi Arabia to help America fight off the belligerent Iraqi forces from Kuwait during the Gulf War. So why do Americans celebrate Mubarak's resignation?

Although Egypt claims that their next president will be more peaceful and understanding, how can we trust those who used violent rebellions to remove their current president? I believe we should not celebrate the removal of Mubarak; we should be weary of the next Egyptian president for they may become an American enemy.

-SEAL BEACH, Sam Loya: My wife and I visited Egypt this past September/October on as a trip to remember, to celebrate our retirement. I surprised her with the trip. The Egyptian civilization has been in existence for more than 5,000 years. The country is full of history and has been a major contributor to it over the centuries. At times it was so advanced compared to the rest of the world.

We toured the Nile, visiting the temples, Pyramids and cities along the way. We traveled by plane, river boat, bus and even rode a camel. We both were so amazed at what we saw during our stay in Egypt and revisited what we had seen over dinner each night – amazing.

However, I left Egypt with one very significant thought: Egypt was such a mighty force over the years of early civilization. What went wrong? I found myself looking at a city that was in ruins but had once had a huge population.

Poverty was everywhere. It was hard to see the beautiful past with all its color and glory and then turn to the modern cities and see so many people with their hands out.

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